One Indie Author's Perspective

Dear Reader,

I know you’ve heard from just about everyone already, but I’ve been relatively silent so far. There are reasons for this. One, I’m terrified, like everyone else. Just to put that out there. I’ve also had some things going on in my life that go beyond books, but back to books for a moment. I’ve been incredibly busy trying to put out as many sapphic romance novels and audiobooks as I can for a few reasons.

• This was already planned for 2025, and my wife and I had no intention of changing our plans;

• This is a way to fight back against people who seek to ban our books about women falling in love;

• There’s a chance that my books will get banned in some of the US, if not all of it, and the majority of my sales (like many indie authors) come from the US, so the more I can put out now, the better for my income if I can no longer sell here or anywhere.

Now, let me get to the points of my blog post today, of which there are many, so I’m going to attempt to keep my thoughts as organized as I can, but I hope if you’re reading, you’ll stick with me here.

I started publishing in November of 2017, for perspective, so that’s about 7.5 years of publishing books rounded up by a couple of months. Since then, I have published 63 books. The majority of those are full-length novels with some What Happened After novellas and a Proposal Series thrown in here and there. That’s a ton of books in such a short period of time. I tell you this because if I’m impacted, having that many books in my back catalog, there are so many other authors (I’m speaking primarily of indies here) who are also affected by everything going on in the world right now.

I’ve had one job or another since I was a pre-teen, and after college, I started working for a big corporation in their training department. I’ll date myself here, but I’m an elder millennial who lived through 9/11 as a teenager. Then, I went to college and was told that’s what you do: you go to college and get a degree. Without it, you can’t get a job. So, I did that. Not long after I got that degree, the 2008 crash happened. At my job, we were told that we’d be losing our 401(k) matching (retirement account for those outside of the US), our bonuses, and that we wouldn’t be getting raises that year, either.

I made next to nothing at the time, even with a corporate job. Seriously, there were weeks when I was glad that I had to travel for work because it meant that I wouldn’t have to pay for my own food that week or put gas in the car. I went back to school and got a master’s degree to make myself more marketable because that was what you were told to do back then. I had to take out student loans, like a lot of people here in the US, and I was able to pay them back later, thankfully, but right when I finished my 20-month-long program, I got a job at a tiny company that was horrible, so it led me to look for another job almost immediately. That’s how I got into running training departments in tech.

Why am I sharing this with you? I’ve lived through a lot of this crap. I’ve had to start over time and time again because of something outside of my control, like bankers tossing mortgages out of a truck during a parade and screwing up the entire economy and everything in between. I now have nearly 20 years of experience in tech and training, and I’ve worked for various companies over the years. About a year ago, I quit my full-time job. I did this for a few reasons. One, my wife and I talked at length about it, and my mental and physical health was horrible. I’m sure many people could relate to this, and I won’t name companies or people who worked there who contributed to this, but it was the worst professional working experience I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something.

I’ve wanted to be a full-time writer my entire life. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do. Everything else came second. I did want to be an FBI profiler for a time, but that still was second to my desire to write full-time, so when I was miserable and burned out, like so many other people, I decided to quit my day job and work on the writing and publishing business with my wife full-time.

I also had hope that we’d have a very different administration than we do right now when the election was all said and done, so my fear about quitting was there, but it wasn’t as prevalent as it’s been since the election. So, I quit, and I thought I’d at least take a few years off. If I didn’t need to go back to a day job, I wouldn’t, and that would be amazing. Unfortunately, the election didn’t go how I’d hoped, and right after it, I started applying for jobs. I did this because if they ban our books, both my wife and I will not have jobs. We’d have no income. I won’t get into detail about the additional planning and steps we’ve taken out of fear, but we did get our power of attorney docs taken care of with a very sympathetic attorney who told us that she was pretty much booked solid with LGBTQ+ couples because of the election.

I have applied for at least one job per weekday pretty much since the election. I have 18 years of experience, and while I have some parameters like all people looking for jobs should have, I’m applying for jobs that I am underqualified for, perfectly qualified for, and maybe a little overqualified for, so there’s a good mix in there. I haven’t gotten a single initial phone interview request. Again, I won’t go into how companies using algorithms to help them organize candidates is a pretty awful idea (and I’m saying this as someone with experience in this), but for whatever reason, the algorithm isn’t picking up what I’m putting down, and this is with me altering my resume and cover letter for many of these jobs, using the right keywords, etc.

The best (and by that, I mean worst) part of this experience is that you don’t even know if these jobs are genuine postings because there are reports of companies posting fake roles to make it look like they’re growing, so not only am I fighting AI taking over roles like mine, and the algorithms that deem me unworthy of the job, I’m also spending time applying for jobs that might not exist, making me feel like Peeta in The Hunger Games when he’s asking Katniss, “Real or not real?” It’s a grueling process that I’m only at the beginning of, and I expect to have to keep looking for the next year, if not longer, before I get any kind of positive result because some people don’t understand how the economy works and thought they’d get cheaper eggs by voting red.

So, with all of that in mind, let me get to the crux of this blog post. Yes, I’m talking about boycotts. Specifically, Amazon. I know you’ve heard this all before, but I think we have to keep repeating it because some folks still need to hear it: boycotting Amazon by canceling Prime or Kindle Unlimited (KU) or just not buying from them doesn’t hurt any billionaire. It never will. It hurts indie authors specifically, but it also hurts Amazon employees, who are not anywhere close to being billionaires. I have heard so many stories already about indie authors having their sales dip so much, or their page reads turn to dust. Some of them do this full-time, others have day jobs, but that doesn’t matter. If you want to cancel KU because you don’t use it and you need to save money – no problem. But whenever someone boycotts this service, it’s the authors who suffer.

My wife ran the numbers for me this morning, and since I started publishing – again, 7.5 years of data – 68% of my book-related income (not audiobooks) has come from KU. I am able to publish books as often as I do because my wife is my editor, cover designer, and overall, the one who’s running the business side of things. If we didn’t have KU, she’d have a full-time job somewhere, and so would I, so I only would’ve been able to put out a book or two a year, if I were lucky, if I didn’t participate in KU.

Do I like that billionaires are running and ruining the world? No, I hate it. I hate that we’re here and that this administration is attempting to privatize government, along with all of the other horrible things that they’re doing, but until that asteroid possibly hits us in 2032, I still have to make a living. So do the other authors in this genre. I have to pay taxes on that living, and since I’m not a billionaire, I’m going to have to pay more than ever before, like so many other Americans.

Here’s my overall stance on boycotts, in case you’re curious, which you might not be because I’m just one more person yammering on about this. I think we should all do whatever we can, even if it feels like a small thing, to stop this authoritarian government. That might mean for you not shopping at a company that immediately got rid of their DEI departments and initiatives and finding somewhere else to shop. It might mean holding up a cardboard sign at a protest. It could mean, like it does for me, writing the books that they want to eliminate and publishing as many as I can to say, “Fuck you” to all of them. Whatever you can contribute to the cause is worthy.

However, I am constantly reminded of The Good Place, and if you haven’t watched this TV show, you should. It’s very much appropriate, given the times. It takes place in the afterlife, and long story short, people are awarded points or have points taken away for every action they do on Earth. There’s a moment where the characters are trying to figure out why so many people are being sent to the bad place instead of the good place, and they discover that it’s because the world has gotten so unbelievably complicated that it’s damn near impossible to do any truly ethical action. If you buy from a company that still has DEI, that’s great, but where did those products come from? Were they made ethically? Did the company cut corners? Do they treat their employees fairly? Etc. You get the idea. This is where we are. You can boycott Amazon, but if you shop at that local store owned by the family down the street, that family might have voted red big-time, and you end up supporting their business, which also doesn’t have DEI, and they might have voted “no” on pro-choice or gay marriage or whatever else was on their ballot that past year. It’s difficult to find the perfect place to shop these days, no matter how hard you try. And I’m not condemning anyone for boycotting certain companies, nor am I condemning people who still need to use them. I’m one of those people.

The boycotts won’t matter to the CEOs making millions or billions. The reality is that while they do make huge salaries, it’s a drop in a bucket for them because the majority of their wealth is in shares and dividends. Even if a boycott meant that the company shares would dip temporarily, they’d just short the stock to profit on the way down because knowing a price direction for sure makes it easier, and they’d buy more shares at a lower price with those proceeds and dividends, ultimately making even more money later when the stock recovers. And it will recover because the debt-reliant structure of the world economy won’t stop printing money, the subsequent inflation won’t go anywhere, either, and Wall Street would love a good stock price discount. Private equity might even scoop up a few going-out-of-business mom-and-pop shops while they’re at it, reducing the competition. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is, and while the rich will get richer, we’re all spending more and more of our time trying to find that one local business that’s blue (in short) to shop at.

I had once believed that when I accumulated a big back catalog, my sales would increase and reflect that back catalog. Unfortunately, I live in this timeline, so that has not happened. Some days are better than others, but overall, sales are dipping fairly consistently. Page reads are consistently down as well, and since that is the majority of my income, it’s meant that we’ve had to have conversations around the house that we didn’t anticipate having to have this far along in my publishing journey.

It’s also been difficult for me to know what I can even write about. For example, when people talk about boycotting a certain company or person, if I have mentioned that company or person in a past book that someone picks up today, they might review it and bring up that I included it in the book. This has happened a few times with me already, and it makes me hesitate to mention basic everyday or cultural things in a book I’m writing today that won’t be published for years. If I mention a company today because the characters are shopping there, going there, etc., or a celebrity, even, and later that company or celebrity is discovered to be doing something bad, once the book is out, there’s little I can do about it, but it’s also impacting what I’m writing now. I recently put out a book where I mentioned a company that, when I wrote the book, wasn’t in the news much in a negative way. Once they were, I had to go back in and edit them out because I didn’t want to risk someone commenting in a review that I put the company in a book that I’d actually written years ago. I don’t want to put something or someone in my book if they’re doing horrible things, obviously, but keeping up with who’s horrible today is a never-ending battle, it seems, and it can play with my psyche around my own writing.

Then, there’s the staying in or leaving KU issue. Authors are facing this topic daily. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we stay, we’re supporting the bad guy. If we go, we’re making it harder for people to read our books, and then, we start to see our work being pirated left and right because people can’t get our books without buying them outright (please don’t do this). We’re told to go to Kobo, sell through a paperback distributor, have our e-books on our author sites, and make them available in libraries and with other services, too.

That might work for some authors, and if that’s their choice, I support them in that, but it doesn’t work for the majority of indie authors out there, especially in this genre. My friend once went to the library where I spent the majority of my youth and asked them to put my book on the shelf. He had it with him in his hand, and they turned him down. I’ll get into some of the other services below with some details, too, but watching author after author having to defend themselves for staying on KU because they need the income nearly every day and seeing some comments below from folks suggesting these other services and places makes me sad for those authors and for myself because it feels like some folks think that this is an easier decision for indie authors than it is.

If I left Amazon entirely and only listed my books on my site, promoting them through my newsletter and my socials, I wouldn’t make enough money to keep publishing books. I don’t have the reach. Most authors don’t. I won’t even get into the fact that we have to keep bouncing from social site to social site because this evil billionnare or that keeps taking them over. I had the most followers on Twitter, and I don’t post there anymore, for obvious reasons. I’ve been trying to build up my followers elsewhere, but it’s like playing a game of whack-a-mole because some folks left Twitter when it was still called Twitter and went to Mastodon, but that didn’t work well, so then, we started passing out Bluesky invites to get everyone there, but then Threads started, so people went there, too. I am not and won’t be on TikTok, but that went through it’s whole thing and is still somewhat up in the air, so my point is that getting people to even see you and your book is harder than ever, despite the fact that it should be easier with all of these ways and places to market.

Let me continue a bit by saying that going wide is not an option for me, even if it works for other authors, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon. So, when people mention it to someone else (or me) online, it actually hurts because I’m already fighting all the battles I’m fighting, and now, I also have to convince someone why something for my business won’t work, and still, I risk hearing back from them that it should work. Everyone’s situation is different, so if I could request one thing, it would be for folks to acknowledge and appreciate that.

I won’t get into all the details as to why I can’t go wide, but here are a few.

• KU income is 2/3 of the overall royalties (and Amazon requires exclusivity – none of us like that, by the way)

• Back in 2019, I tried leaving KU for certain books (some of my most popular ones). I had them on Kobo and tried for almost a full year. In that time, I made exactly $94.53. That is not a typo. I had to pull my books from there and put them back on KU. Even if I put every single one of my books on Kobo or another place like it, I wouldn’t make nearly as much as I can through KU. It’s not a fun fact. It’s just a fact. I have to make money to pay my bills, just like everyone else.

• Amazon allows print-on-demand (POD) for paperbacks and hardcover books. The other companies that will print your books for you and help you with distribution often charge big fees, and some even charge you for returns (and there’s a destroy option, too, just for fun). It’s so much money that I’ve heard some authors having to pay them hundreds of dollars because bookstores didn’t sell the copies they bought, and while the bookstores can get their money back, the author pays for the book to be returned. It’s a terrible system, in my opinion, that harms indie authors the most and often makes it cost-prohibitive.

There’s more, but you get the idea. Going wide is great. In theory. As a child who wanted to be a writer, I dreamed of my books being on bookshelves when I was young. I wanted to walk into a store, go to my section, and pick up a book with my own name on it. And while indie authors have options, it’s often much more difficult or more expensive for us than for trad pub authors, especially in our genre. We’d all love to see our books out there, but as we’re all more than aware, not all opportunities are equal, and bookstores have to make money, too, which I get, so even if they might want to stock more of my books or other books in this genre, they have limited shelf space, so they will stock what they know will sell based on their audience/market.

Now, let me wrap things up. If you’re still here, you’ve basically read a novel of mine, so thanks for sticking around. Authors like me are faced with making difficult choices every day. As we continue to struggle with whatever the government here does (and how it impacts the whole world), and we struggle with boycotts of companies that many of us have to use, you’ll likely see more of us getting vulnerable and opening up about those struggles.

For me, I’m looking for a job, to be safe, but I’m also thinking about things like audiobook production. Many of you have heard me talk about audiobooks at length. They’re expensive and can take time to pay you back just for the cost to make them. Yes, there are production companies, but there are sacrifices you make by working with them. You can have books that do not pay back your $500 advance for years because the production company takes their cut and controls a lot (like distribution or pricing), which means you get less. I say this because if things keep going how they’re going, audiobooks will be the first thing to go for me and, likely, others like me. Next, I’d probably publish fewer books than I do now (6-7 books in a normal year for me) because my wife and I won’t have the time to go at the pace we’re going now because we’ll be working other jobs. We’re also looking at other income possibilities with books (like affiliate links and things like selling signed books on my site or even going on Patreon with the things I’ve always offered for free on my website). For example, the bonus scenes that I posted for free every week for a year are all still free, and I’d planned to keep them and whatever else I posted that way, but that might not be tenable.

I’m sharing this with you because if I have 60+ books in my catalog, others without as many are also struggling with the low page counts and sales numbers. This isn’t me trying to pressure you into getting KU or buying books if you can’t afford or aren’t interested in doing so. It’s just stating the facts and making you aware of the difficulty to merely exist as an indie author today.

We’re all struggling in our own ways with what’s going on in the world, and I don’t take that lightly, but if you love the books we write in this genre and you are able to buy or participate in KU, a lot of indie authors would greatly appreciate it. If your stance is, “Say no to Amazon,” I just ask that you really think about who you’re hurting when you decide not to buy a book that we sell there. If you still don’t want to buy from them, that’s your choice. If you can, support authors in other ways. For example, a lot of us have Ko-Fi or Buy Me a Coffee links on our sites as well as a way for you to support our art, but reviews and spreading the word about our books and how much you enjoy them on social media is a free and great way to support us. Blast your new favorite book far and wide whenever you can! Subscribing to our newsletters is another way to do that, and it won’t cost you any money, either. Don’t rely on an external platform to tell you that the author has a new book out. Follow the author wherever you can, but specifically their newsletter, because we live in times when our works could be taken off any platform without our input, or we can have a limited reach on those platforms due to, well, billionaires.

I hope that when authors are telling you that they’re making tough choices, you’re able to hear it. I know, for me, when I get questions about me making more audiobooks than I’m currently putting out (7-8 a year), it can definitely hurt because the main reason I can’t put every book into audio immediately is money, and while I’d love to have all of my books in audio, I just can’t do that, especially now. It’s often not that we don’t want to do something; it’s usually that we can’t.

Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones in these trying times.

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